“Overthinking,” is how many clients describe what is happening inside their heads. Rumination is what psychologists call it. Everyone does it to some degree, but when it begins to impair your life, you might look for help.
What is Overthinking?
Here are some common examples
Replaying painful events over in your mind
Imagining worst-case scenarios
Recalling mistakes you made
Blaming yourself
Comparing yourself to others
Imagining future conversations with people
The worst part is how these negative thoughts seem to play automatically. At any time of day or night they appear to torment you and distract you from resting, enjoying relationships or being productive in work.
Why does overthinking happen?
There is a sensible reason that your mind will produce negative thoughts. You have a built-in safety warning system. Job number one for your mind is to prevent disaster that would end or ruin your life. If you step onto a busy street or walk up to the edge of a cliff, your attention will instantly focus on what could harm you. Your mind will just as quickly warn you about dangers to your reputation, social status, career or love life.
Sometimes this safety warning system gets stuck on high like a fire alarm that goes off by itself. Stress or trauma often does that. When we are overwhelmed by more than we can handle, our minds get stuck in negative thinking without solutions.
How does counselling help?
I, and most therapists will help you with overthinking in specific ways.
Get specific about the negative thoughts so you can challenge them and name the alternatives.
Practice halting the cascade of negative thoughts
Practice accepting negative thoughts as normal events that come and go
Discover how past events in childhood or trauma are still affecting today’s thinking
Learn to switch from chaotic negative thinking into problem-solving
Learn new communication skills
Identify the most important values and choices for your future
Overthinking usually happens when your mind is overwhelmed by stress or painful events. Sometimes it can be reset just by learning new skills and a few life changes. Sometimes it is much more serious and needs deep personal work or medical psychiatric intervention.
I’m glad to have a conversation with you to see if counselling with me is a good fit for you.
Thoughts run away by themselves sometimes, seeming out of control, making us suffer over all the possible worst-case scenarios.
Working with your own thinking is a central activity in CBT (cognitive behaviour therapy). It has been tested with millions of clients by now and is known to make a big difference in anxious thinking. This is my version of a good CBT exercise. You will need some paper or a journal to write your thoughts in.
Can You Control Thoughts? – Yes
Try this little experiment in moving your attention from one thing to another: Stop right now and pay attention to your feet, where they are what is on them, and how they feel. Stop reading for a moment to do that.
Ok, now you are back at this screen. Now pay attention to your hands, and what they look like. Stop and do that.
Notice how it felt to move your attention around, back and forth between this screen and your hands or feet. You did that by deliberately controlling your mind. Controlling anxious thinking is a bit like that on a bigger scalel, so let’s break it into steps.
Step 1. Observe Your Thoughts
Consider this unfortunate fellow who is worrying about something:
His mind is running this playlist of thoughts over and over and he feels awful, unable to focus on other things. He is sure these thoughts are all absolutely true. You can see that only the first ones are true; the rest are predictions.
What would your playlist of thoughts look like? Grab a sheet of paper (which you can destroy later) or a journal and write down your worries.
Now see if you can notice, with curiosity, how all these thoughts roll around in your mind. The playlist seems to run automatically even if you don’twant to hear these thoughts yet again. It is not like normal problem-solving where you figure something out. This instead is a continuous, distressing noise in your mind that gets in the way of everything else.
Step 2 – Ask: What Effect Do These Thoughts Have?
Feeling:
You might notice that even as you look at those worries, you get a feeling. Maybe a feeling of tension, fear, anger, helplessness, urgency, or something else.
Focus
How much mental focus do these thoughts consume? How much do they get in the way of thinking about other important items?
Abilities
How much do these worries diminish your normal handling of day-to-day challenges?
Relationships
What do these worries do to your relationships? Usually, worries make us more distant from others, especially our close relationships. Our spouses or partners usually notice and maybe complain about it.
Write down your answers. Writing has a greater effect than just thinking in your mind.
Step 3. See The Cycle of Suffering.
Step back from agreeing with the worries for a moment. Just notice how they work. Pause and notice that your suffering is not because of events in the outside world. Instead, the real suffering is generated on the inside due to unwanted cycling of the same thoughts and feelings over and over.
Sure, you know this already but do something different here. Sit quietly and observe this happening in your own mind. Do that for a minute or so.
Step 4. Make a Realistic Alternative Playlist
It took some effort, but our friend has decided to challenge his beliefs about what will happen. He has come up with some alternatives:
This playlist of thoughts does not play automatically, so he has to deliberately choose to think, and say, these thoughts.
Now write down your alternative playlist of thoughts. Only write down things that really make sense to you. These questions might help:
What would you tell a friend in the same situation?
What do you truly believe about the meaning of your life?
Think of a person you trust. What would they say to you?
What are your long term goals?
Do not write fluffy positive affirmations. Write something you coud actually believe in time.
As you write, you may notice a shift in how you feel. So far so good. Next is the big question
Step 5. Use “Present Moment” to Switch Playlists
It’s almost impossible to just switch from negative thinking to positive. Next is a powerful tool to help make the change.
The best-known method of switching thought mental playlists is to start by deliberately bringing your attention into the present moment. Any activity that makes you focus on what is right here, right now will qualify. This is the part where you “get out of your head.” Do it by purposefully moving your mind to what is outside of you.
In counselling, we practice ways of doing this. Here are some ways to do this on your own.
Mindfulness
Sit at pay mindful attention to where you are right now. Just notice what is in front of you, above you, and around you. Notice how your body feels sitting there. Notice your breath going in and out. Stretch your arms or legs and feel the stretching. After doing that for a few minutes, ask yourself which thought playlist you would like to allow back into your mind.
Speak it Out Loud
Say your thoughts out loud to someone. It doesn’t need to be too heavy. Even this will do: “I’ve been worrying a lot about this problem, and now I’m working on having a better perspective by recognizing…(describe the better thoughts)… and I think it will help me move on.” As you say that out loud, your mind finds it much easier to believe the realistic, better thinking.
Physical Activity
Do some activity that is good for you. Not to be confused with mere distraction, some activities like walking, exercise, socializing, or going out to enjoy music or movies gives your mind a healthy break to reset. After you do that, review the two playlists above. You may find it easier to choose balanced thinking after this reset.
Each of the above activities provides a break to get out of your head. Do them with the specific intention that “I am bringing my mind back to more balanced thinking.” It is a bit like practicing a sport or musical instrument. You get more skill with practice.
6. Give Yourself Permission to Lapse
We all slip back and forth between anxious and positive thinking. It’s not possible to think positively all the time. We even need times of anxiety in our lives to help us get moving. For those of us to tend to worry more, it helps to recognize that we will slip in and out of feeling this way. Having some tools to observe and change our thinking is the best protection against feeling trapped by anxiety.
In counselling offices, clients with anxiety come seeking relief. They just want it to end somehow. They may have already put much effort into dysfunctional coping strategies such as substance use, avoiding people and situations, and telling others and themselves that “I’m fine.” All that has been an effort to avoid the feelings of anxiety.
Ironically, by practicing avoidance, we make anxiety the enemy, battling to get rid of it, anxiety becomes the star of our show, stealing the spotlight from everything else that matters to us.
In his book Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life, Stephen Hayes describes what happens when we try to avoid anxiety. Like the Chinese finger trap pictured below, the harder you pull, the harder it grips your finger. The only way to escape is to stop trying to get out.
Fighting anxiety just makes it grab tighter.
Picture a tug-of-war with your anxiety. You pull as hard as possible to win the war, but your anxiety pulls back just as hard. You are equally matched in an endless struggle. Stephen Hayes proposes a new way to end the tug-of-war: Drop the rope.
In place of struggling with anxiety, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) recommends a new stance of acceptance or willingness toward distressing thoughts and feelings. It is entirely normal for us humans to go through cycles of distress and calm. As we let worried stressful thoughts just pass through us, anxiety starts to take a smaller and smaller portion of our mental energy.
Anxiety about Anxiety
Sometimes anxiety comes in two parts.
Part One – Anxiety that is triggered by something external that worries you such as social situations, financial pressure, or something dangerous. This anxiety comes for natural reasons. When it gets excessive, you will naturally start seeking coping strategies to help manage those feelings.
Part Two – As if a voice inside you says “Oh no, my anxiety is back! This is terrible!” A cascade of thoughts and feelings begins, focused on worrying about the anxiety that first appeared in response to a trigger. Now you have double the anxiety you started with. Often when I point this out to counselling clients, they find it fairly easy to shed these worries about anxiety.
Many people find they can dispense with part two using acceptance. By taking a breath and speaking to themselves, with kindness, something like, “Yes my anxiety is back, and that’s something that happens to me, so I will just let it pass through me. I will keep focusing on what’s important about today.” Doing so does not make anxiety go away, as we wish it would. It does free us from the need to battle with anxiety symptoms. This is disengaging with anxiety, giving it a smaller place in our world.
Practicing Acceptance of Anxiety
This is something we work on in counselling sessions, and here is a short version that you can try yourself in three steps. These steps are described by Russ Harris in his ACT book “The Happiness Trap.” He calls it “dropping anchor.” Find a quiet location with a comfortable chair and go through these steps:
1. Acknowledge your thoughts and feelings
As you sit quietly, notice the thoughts and feelings showing up inside your mind. Notice the anxious feeling that is inside your body. Silently name it by saying, “I notice a feeling of ________ inside me.” Also, name the anxious thoughts that go through your mind. Decide that it will be okay if those thoughts and feelings are there for now.
2. Connect with your body and the world around you
Feel the floor with your feet; feel how the chair holds your body. Take some deep breaths and observe how breathing works. Notice the room or environment around you. See the details and colours. Notice what you hear too. Even take time to notice you are there.
See if you can calmly let the feelings of anxiety or the worried thoughts just be there as you stretch your arms or neck, push your feet into the floor and breathe deeply.
3. Engage and circle back
Notice what you are doing here. Then go a bit deeper. Name in detail the anxious thoughts and feelings that are inside. Notice how they want to pull all of your attention. Then pay attention to the environment you are in again, flex your body and notice what you see and hear or smell. Go through this circle a few times.
By the end of this little exercise, you may find something has shifted in the way you feel. You may be more ready to handle the day, even with some anxious feelings fluttering around in your body. They may be less significant now.
Refocus on Values
Values are the qualities of living that matter to us. They are not goals for the future; they describe the kind of person we want to be, right here, today and this week. What kind of person do you want to be? Here are just a few possibilities:
Accepting
Assertive
Compassionate
Contributing
Courageous
Flexible
Fun
Kind
Responsible
Skillful
For a more extensive values list, see this page by Russ Harris
When you choose to focus on being the kind of person you believe in, some of your internal struggles become more tolerable. Similar to the pain you feel if you exercise, or the disapproval you sometimes receive when you make a tough decision, anxiety can be accepted as something that goes with being a caring or thoughtful person. Would I rather be numb to risks and the suffering of others? Can I accept anxiety being with me as I strive to be the best I can be?
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Anxiety
In the ACT model for coping with anxiety acceptance and commitment have specific meanings to guide progress:
Acceptance of my thoughts and feelings that cause distress, instead of avoidance.
Commitment to living and being the kind of person I believe in.
As we do this, anxiety and worry often diminish, consuming less of our mental energy, allowing us to focus on living better.
